The decision-making authority of elected officials in Benton Harbor, Michigan was suspended under a new emergency manager law passed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

In a speech Wednesday, Snyder said he also wanted to abolish the minimum number of hours children are required to be in school. He announced that he was targeting 23 school districts for takeover by state-appointed unilateral executives.

"Every single one of those places has just been told that them having locally elected officials, that's a problem," MSNBC Rachel Maddow explained Thursday. "That democracy is in the way of making things more efficient in Michigan, that Democracy is not the way we fix problems in America, that it is a problem."

A Washtenaw County elections panel approved language this morning for a recall petition aimed at Gov. Rick Snyder.

The three-member panel voted 2-1 to approve the petition, clearing the way for the group Michigan Citizens United to begin to collect signatures. They would need the signatures of 807,000 registered voters collected within a 90-day period to force an election.

A slurry of internal memos reveal what many of us have long suspected: that the rules under which alleged terrorists are incarcerated at the U.S.-run detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are elastic, arbitrary, and in many cases criminally unjust. According to the documents, much of the evidence held against the 172 prisoners at Guantanamo is circumstantial and often obtained through torture. The coerced confession of Mohammed al-Qahtani, for example, a Saudi national suspected of complicity in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, was filed away as evidence against some 16 of his fellow inmates without any reference to the manner in which it was produced. In some cases, prisoners identified as highly dangerous were freed, apparently under diplomatic pressure from their mother countries that happened to be U.S. allies in the War on Terror. Meanwhile, Guantanamo inmates held for years on the most specious grounds ended up committing terrorist attacks against U.S. targets after their release. As its 10th anniversary looms, it can be safely said that the Bush administration’s ham-fisted response to the September 11 attacks has created as many terrorists has it has neutralized.

Oh, when we start considering Abu Ghraib, and predator missile attacks, and the regimes we've propped up, I think it is guaranteed we are far out producing what we eliminate.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Fred Trump, Donald's father, was, unlike his son, a self-made man. He made his fortune by building thousands of units of middle-class housing in Brooklyn and Queens. But in the early 1970s, Donald was made president of the family company.

One of Donald's first challenges came in October 1973, when the Justice Department hit the Trump Organization with a major discrimination suit for violating the Fair Housing Act. The Times reported:

... the Government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals "because of race and color." It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.

The journalist Gwenda Blair reported in her 2005 Trump biography that while Fred Trump had sought to combat previous discrimination allegations through "quiet diplomacy," Donald decided to go on the offensive. He hired his friend Roy Cohn, the celebrity lawyer and former Joseph McCarthy aide, to countersue the government for making baseless charges against the company. They sought a staggering $100 million in damages.

Wonder how many of the self-proclaimed self-defined ultra-patriots who wished the South had win will still accept the federal funds declared available by Obama needed to rebuild their Galtian trailer-parks?

(Yeah, I'm a bid pissed off an jaded on all the stupidity of the last few decades)

Conservatives are going to have to just settle for Birth of a Nation and seeing Jesus get eviscerated for their box office glories. Apparently going Galt really means not buying a ticket for a lousy movie.

"Critics, you won," said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," which covers the first third of Rand's dystopian novel. "I'm having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2."

"Atlas Shrugged" was the top-grossing limited release in its opening weekend, generating $1.7 million on 299 screens and earning a respectable $5,640 per screen. But the box office dropped off 47% in the film's second week in release even as "Atlas Shrugged" expanded to 425 screens

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I have thoroughly enjoyed Charles Pierce predictably being one sports writer (among other things he writes about) that doesn't scream on ESPN and doesn't kiss the ass of the Commissioner of the NFL -- and yes we are looking at you Peter King. Besides, who has come up with a better line than this to describe the Wall Street Journal editorial page (which Goddell used yesterday) than this?

Highlights For Plutocrats

Which would make, as discussed below, National Review a "Stroke Mag for Sociopaths".

Well, it is good they put it on the front page so Jonah's pages won't stick together, and though "Mr. Bogg" (like I'm the NY Times!) has one fine interpretation, I prefer the Rich Lowry Special Edition:

In North Carolina GOP voters are almost evenly divided on the outcome of the war with 35% glad for the North's victory, 33% ruing the South's loss, and 32% taking neither side. Democrats (55/15) and independents (57/14) have similar numbers to Georgia but due to the greater ambivalence of Republicans about the northern victory, overall less than half of Tar Heel voters (48%) are glad the Union won to 21% who wish the Confederacy had.

I do share something in common with most Republicans, I'm glad Lincoln isn't alive to see this, though for different reasons.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

You are the fictional intellectually gifted white child of a wealthy and powerful man (are there are other kind?) who is somehow wrongfully deprived of a Harvard Education despite your incredible gifts for holding liquor, discretely dispensing Rohypnol to girls you are interested in and mocking Jewish kids. Oh, noz, you'll have to go to Dartmouth or Princeton, the horror, the horror!!!

According to Donald Trump's latest increasingly racist bloviation, a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the Harvard Law School somehow deprived you of your birthright.

If your broadband uses Wi-Fi , as frankly many, if not most of us with more than one PC do (this is rather sad but at present I live alone and have 1 classic desktop, one all-in-one desktop, and 1 regularly used laptop -- pathetically I also have two other laptops and two desktops that are in the closet waiting to be recycled, seven computers for one person...plus the PC I use at my office -- hard to believe I've been single so long, right ladies?*) you may want to make sure you use a password. Not simply because it might keep you from getting hacked in the classic manner. Rather, it might prevent this:

A man was accused of downloading thousands of images of child pornography. Disgusting and gross, right? Yup. But it wasn't him! Turns out, it was his neighbor that had tapped into his home's open Wi-Fi network who downloaded the child porn.

A recall petition against Cowles will be submitted to the Government Accountability Board this Thursday, putting the number of Republican senators facing recall elections at six after signatures were delivered against Alberta Darling on April 21.

If we consider "monarchy" to be a modern system...because let's face it, it is probably the oldest...where other than monarchy and republican democracy has a child following their parent ever made for a decent ruler?

Not that the odds are all that great in either Monarchy (I mean King Louis was awesome, but his son King Louis was terrible, and his son King Louis was then not so bad but then his son King Louis was the worst) or a Republic. There were Pitt the Elder and Younger in Britain, but in America we've gotten John & John Quincy Adams -- average at best and George & George W. Bush, about which you can only say, well, they weren't the Duvaliers (if for no other reason than no one would ever call the latter Bush "Doc" for any reason).

But nobody does worse than the dictatorship. From the North Korean Kims to the Hussein brothers to the Assads.

Suspects were nabbed and shipped to Gitmo because they wore cheap watches. A specific model of watch — a Casio style released in the 1980s — was suspected to be used as a timer by al-Qaeda operatives. People in Afghanistan were seized and sent to the detention facility because they were wearing the watches, but most have been quietly released because of a lack of evidence.

Good thing they weren't "Swatches" because everyone who appeared on MTV in the 80s would have been arrested. Run "DMC" Run!

The New York Times has published files related to the prisoners of GITMO since the Fall of 2001 and the details are about as uninspiring and depressing as you would imagine.

In May 2003, for example, Afghan forces captured Prisoner 1051, an Afghan named Sharbat, near the scene of a roadside bomb explosion, the documents show. He denied any involvement, saying he was a shepherd. Guantánamo debriefers and analysts agreed, citing his consistent story, his knowledge of herding animals and his ignorance of “simple military and political concepts,” according to his assessment. Yet a military tribunal declared him an “enemy combatant” anyway, and he was not sent home until 2006.

That's a real endorsement of the military tribunals. Maybe they kept him around to give Mickey Kaus tips? I'm sure this gentlemen is now a real fan of American values.

The documents show that a major reason a Sudanese cameraman for Al Jazeera, Sami al-Hajj, was held at Guantánamo for six years was for questioning about the television network’s “training program, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan...He was released in 2008 and returned to work for Al Jazeera.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

A story detailing the recovery and struggle of Gabrielle Giffords -- and showing how those urging her to run for the Senate or resign should both shut the hell up.

There were hopeful language signs even on the March day that Giffords learned about the people killed on Jan. 8. She had been told there were more bullets, Kelly says, but she didn't yet know that there were deaths. He was reading aloud to her from the New York Times - a story about Giffords herself. She followed with her eyes over his shoulder, noticed that he skipped a paragraph, and grabbed the paper out of his hand. He hadn't realized how well she could read.

The paragraph told of six dead, many more wounded. Kelly comforted Giffords while she cried. Her grief spread over days and weeks.

"So many people, so many people," Giffords repeated.

Her nurse Poteet would find Giffords with heavy looks on her face, repeating "no-no-no-no-no."

"She was thinking of it like she couldn't believe it," Poteet says. "She kept saying, 'I want so bad,' and she was trying to talk about it. But it was too many thoughts in one."

For that reason, Kelly hasn't told Giffords that the shooting victims included her friends and colleagues Gabe Zimmerman and Judge John Roll, or a 9-year-old girl, and three others, the kind of older constituents she loves to help.

How many more hours have the news networks already devoted to a Royal Wedding few people in this country (or anywhere) give a shit about, versus how much they've spent on the GOP's determination to end medicare that people do give a shit about?

I thought about getting the MLB.com package last year hear in Des Moines to use the internet to stream games in high def onto my 50 inch plasma. And then I learned I could pay about $150 bucks to not see my team (the Twins) ever play because their games were blacked out on that system if I lived here. So not getting it was an easy decision.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Notorious Koran-burning freak Pastor Terry Jones is up in Dearborn today protesting the purported (i.e., non-existent) imposition of Sharia Law in the city. And he made a big to-do about bringing a pistol to the protest.

And now, alas, there's been a fatality: the floorboard of Jones' car.

Jones is apparently so handy with a firearm that he managed to accidentally discharge his weapon in his car.

Tell 'em John McCain's gonna fly an F-8 in the direction of where he lives, that SOB has a bout a 1 in 5000 shot of auguring the son of a bitch within a 10 mile radius of that muftied-up bastard and about a 2 to 1 shot of crashing it into somebody.

Here's my guess (like it is really a guess, we all know this) ol' Johnny boy is gonna somehow fall in love with yet another war that demands escalation.

Let's have a good solid Bronx Cheer for these three survivors of the burger wars:

Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) who added a provision to the 9/11 Responders health care bill last May that requires the tens of thousands of police, firefighters, emergency personnel, and construction workers etc. who sacrificed themselves for others that day to first be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list. If they have a similar name to a suspected terrorist they will be barred from getting medical treatment. Because clearly Cliff Stearns anti-terror bona fides are beyond question, while some guy who ran through fiery debris to save others might be a terrorist enabler...or voted for Cuomo.

And then finally, there is -- arguably -- the greatest Republican exemplar of them all. Senator John Ensign (R-Nev) who proved that there's no greater power in a Republican household than mom and dad's money. This true Republican hero reportedly will resign his Senate seat as soon as this morning.

Someday they'll be on stamps...in a random well-bribed Caribbean nation.

BP Goes on a Suing SpreeBP went after three companies yesterday with lawsuits for "misconduct" (ha!) and for tarnishing its good name over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, most notably Halliburton.

On April 24th, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery roared into space, carrying HST into orbit and into history. In honor of this anniversary, astronomers have released a new image of the interacting galaxies Arp 273

Newt Gingrich raised a meager $53,000 into his political action committee in the first three months of the year, highlighting potential fundraising difficulties as the former House Speaker girds for a campaign for the GOP presidential nomination...

So Ann Coulter's latest "book" with inaccurate endnotes and everything just zooms in on a picture of the thing as it lays on the floor of her latest imaginary conquest's imaginary bedroom, where her victim discerns a very real spire.

Although even that's edited. We all know that not only is the dress no longer inky black, it would be covered with years of encrusted stains from the fapping right-wingers she insists surround her at all times for her to devour like the praying mantis hybrid she is.

And hey, enjoy your morning everyone now that these images have been provided you.

Scotland Yard has accepted for the first time the extent of the phone-hacking scandal when it told a court the number of potential victims whose voicemails were targeted by the News of the World is likely to be "substantially" more than 91.

A high court hearing to timetable and organise the growing civil claims for damages against Rupert Murdoch's News International heard that the new police investigation believed the scale of potential victims was much higher than leading officers had previously said.

The small-town newspapers in New York's Hudson Valley that Fox News chief Roger Ailes owns with his wife Elizabeth are in a staff revolt after employees caught Ailes spying on them with News Corp. security goons.

An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).

As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."

But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so.

Someone should ask Paul Ryan or Rand Paul about this -- but that would require, y'know, journalism.

Rand also is often alleged to have done the bump & grind with Alan Greenspan back in the day, though it may have been a more metaphorical handjob, while married -- one of her infidelities.

In short, Ayn Rand, was completely fucked up and a hypocrite.

Too bad she didn't live to see how profitable that was in modern Republicans.

Scotland Yard has accepted for the first time the extent of the phone-hacking scandal when it told a court the number of potential victims whose voicemails were targeted by the News of the World is likely to be "substantially" more than 91.

A high court hearing to timetable and organise the growing civil claims for damages against Rupert Murdoch's News International heard that the new police investigation believed the scale of potential victims was much higher than leading officers had previously said.

“I think we need to let the so-called Bush tax cuts all to expire,” Greenpsan said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Greenspan, who led the Fed from 1986 to 2007, said the federal tax rates should go back to what they were under President Bill Clinton. In 2001 and 2003, Bush lowered the tax rates for almost all Americans.

Paul Ryan was last seen struggling to swallow his jujube between sobs.

Marilyn Davenport, a Tea Party activist and member of the Orange County Republican Party's central committee, is drawing fire from people in her own party after circulating a racist email depicting President Barack Obama and his parents as chimpanzees. In the email: "Now you know why — No birth certificate!"

Donald Trump considers it quite the knee-slapper.

Oh, here comes the rationalization:

"Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people--mostly people I didn't think would be upset by it." [...]

The lesson of this week is that after years of being called 'appeasers' or 'traitors' it is the height of incivility to call out Republicans on asinine and cruel policies because it might hurt their tender fifis.

The operator of the crippled nuclear power plant leaking radiation in northern Japan announced a plan Sunday to bring the crisis under control within six to nine months and allow some evacuated residents to return to their homes.

Meanwhile...

Officials reported late Saturday that radioactivity had again risen sharply in seawater near the plant, signaling the possibility of new leaks. Workers have been spraying massive amounts of water into the overheated reactors and spent fuel storage pools. Some of that water, contaminated with radiation, has leaked into the Pacific.

So the teabaggers had a sucky demonstration with a couple thousand at best people waiving don't tread on me (instead let Koch tread on you) banners with intellectual titans Sarah Palin and Andrew Breibart confirming their electronic deposits and speaking to the assemble collective intelligence (all together they'd make a singular MENSA associate member).

There were even more counter-protesters.

With Walker having admitted the whole thing was not about saving money -- in fact it ended not saving a dime, naturally Palin was praising the costs savings ... and Breitbart was his normal projecting self.

At one point conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart took the stage and told the labor supporters to "go to hell."

The state's investigation into vote irregularities in Waukesha County will stretch back at least five years, the head of the Government Accountability Board said Thursday.

Questions over vote totals in Waukesha have lingered over the last week, after County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced she failed to report more than 14,000 votes from the city of Brookfield in initial vote totals...

Additional questions surfaced after Nickolaus posted a note to the clerk's website this week explaining discrepancies between the total ballots cast in several elections and the votes for particular offices. In many cases, the number of votes totaled more than the number of ballots cast.

The results for the 2006 attorney general's race, for example, show 174,047 votes for either Democrat Kathleen Falk, Republican J.B. Van Hollen or write-in candidates, a total that is 17,243 votes higher than the total ballots cast recorded elsewhere in the results.

It's hard to believe that Paul Ryan's favorite work of fantasy fiction (along with Reagan Erotica and Robert Samuelson -- redundant?) about a person's desire to justify infidelity through stultifying and hackneyed prose does not make for compelling cinema -- though it works well enough for early morning blog posts.

As a Nobel Prize winning economist once said, the best summary of Atlas Shrugged: the Novel is this:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

What we can say about Atlas Shrugged: the Movie is that it has been judged even worse than another translation of another stupidly-worshiped book Battlefield Earth. So at least it is a good day for John Travolta.

And bring on new mourning. How does Japan get this before Iowa? This State lives (and mostly dies) on these sort of things!

The Meat Monster. The website Opposing Views says the "aptly named sandwich" consists of two hamburgers, a chicken breast, two slices of cheese, three pieces of bacon, and, of course, lettuce, tomatoes, and onion.

Total calories: 1,160. That's more than half the daily recommended amount for a 40-year-old woman of average height and weight. (A regular Whopper has 670 calories.) Japanese customers can also personalize their Monster, adding teriyaki sauce, an egg or even a fish patty.

Three Republican senators on Wednesday will propose a Social Security reform package that would raise the retirement age to 70 and cut benefits for the wealthy.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) previewed their proposal on Fox News, saying that it will put the entitlement program on a long-term path to solvency without raising taxes.

Yes, that's very Republican of 'em and even higher than the Catfood Commission. Make sure more people don't get their benefits and all don't get as many benefits while at the same time keep the workforce static. Good idea during a time of high unemployment.

Cornell University professors will soon publish research that concludes natural gas produced with a drilling method called “hydraulic fracturing” contributes to global warming as much as coal, or even more.

The conclusion is explosive because natural gas enjoys broad political support – including White House backing – due to its domestic abundance and lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned than other fossil fuels.

Cornell Prof. Robert Howarth, however, argues that development of gas from shale rock formations produced through hydraulic fracturing – dubbed “fracking” – brings far more methane emissions than conventional gas production.

The vast majority of abuses documented by Human Rights Watch were perpetrated by forces loyal to Gbagbo against real or perceived Ouattara supporters, notably members of political parties allied to Ouattara, as well as West African immigrants and Muslims. The documented abuses include targeted killings, enforced disappearances, politically motivated rapes, and unlawful use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators. These abuses, committed over a four-month period by security forces under the control of Gbagbo and militias loyal to him, may rise to the level of crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Of course Gbagdo also lost an election...something Republicans don't take kindly to, but apparently lacked a sufficient number of Brooks Brothers suit wearing rioters to hold on to power. Oh, and he isn't a Muslim.

President Barack Obama called Alassane Ouattara, the democratically elected president of the west African nation Ivory Coast, on Tuesday to congratulate him on assuming his duties...

At about the same time, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) was on the floor of the Senate backing Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president who refused to step down from his office after losing an internationally certified election in November.

The man was killin' brown people for Jesus, so he must be a true Angel of the Lord.

Because doing nothing is better than doing whatever the Obama Administration is getting ready to once again pre-compromise with the Republicans over. Doing nothing, includes, actually doing "something" by not doing anything -- letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire. God forbid that would ever happen. Not with the God upon whom the Republicans have obtained a patent -- the Free Market God of easy handguns and tough to obtain reproductive freedom as opposed to the "do unto others..." bullshit commie-God. Doing nothing is also something that there would not be enough votes to do anything about. Let's make it a meme, or at least a hashtag.

On MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews today, former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), co-chair of President Obama’s debt commission, railed against the social conservatives in the Republican party. He admonished male legislators for voting on abortion issues and “homophobes” like Rick Santorum who say “cruel, cruel things” about gays and lesbians

In a way this day, April 12th has more commemorations and memorials than most days. The U.S. Civil War essentially began this day on April 12, 1861 -- and the GOP can now officially proclaim they've switched sides. Fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to be launched into space. Twenty years later was the first launch of the Space Shuttle.

But all-in-all these commemorations may pale, at least in imminence to this:

Japan raised the severity of its nuclear crisis to the highest level on Tuesday, putting it on a par with the world's worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 because of the amount of radiation released into the air and sea...

It had previously been put at a 5 rating, on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in the United States.

Well, at least they've stopped dumping radiation on the ocean. And that's about it for the good news.

The Unites States, with costly military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, increased spending by 2.8 percent to $698 billion -- about six times as much as China, the second-biggest spender ahead of Britain, France and Russia. In 2009, U.S. spending grew 7.7 percent.

"The United States has increased its military spending by 81 percent since 2001," SIPRI said. "At 4.8 percent of gross domestic product, U.S. military spending in 2010 represents the largest economic burden outside the Middle East," said SIPRI Military Expenditure Project chief Sam Perlo-Freeman.

God forbid, we spend slightly less money on bombing and occupying places as a means of reducing the deficit. That would be logical and smart, and completely un-merkin!

President Obama had just agreed to House Speaker John Boehner’s request to include a Republican policy rider to ban taxpayer funding of abortion in Washington, DC, but Boehner wanted more: to defund Planned Parenthood.

The response from the president was blunt.

“Nope. Zero,” the president told Boehner, according to a senior Democratic aide. “And then the Speaker tried to engage it.”

“Nope. Zero,” the president replied again. “He was like, ‘John, this is it.’”

“There were a good 10 minutes of just sitting there of everybody looking at each other,” the aide recalled. “I mean, it was like, there’s nothing to do here. The store’s closed.”

“It was awkward, like, what do you do now?”

You know what's awkward? Being told to be relieved to find a vestigial remnant of a spine where a real one should be. Well that and two men deciding whether they could settle for symbolically allowing women to be insulted rather than just going ahead and punishing them outright.

Sure, Barack Obama's negotiating strategy is to meet other side 95% of the way there rather than take even a permeable line in the sand...as an opening bid. However, you can count on him, when the chips are down, to barely lift a finger...sometimes not the middle one.

Now shut up base and give him money! This kind of compromise doesn't come without costs.

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so...the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.

Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse…

The absurd thing is that Ryan’s act isn’t even politically courageous. It’s canny calculation, but courage it is not...

No matter what, Ryan’s gambit, ultimately, is all about trying to get middle-class voters to swallow paying for tax cuts for rich people. It takes chutzpah to try such a thing, but having a lot of balls is not the same as having courage.

Booman highlights a telling quote in the NY Times from old GOP head James Baker that tells you all you need to know about which brand the Republicans in Congress are going to line up behind soon over the debt limit:

“If I were still Treasury secretary, it would worry the hell out of me,” said James A. Baker III, who served in that office for President Ronald Reagan, during a time when the total federal debt nearly tripled over his two terms. “But it doesn’t worry me as a good Republican, and one who wants to finally see some fiscal responsibility in this country.”

The ultimate IOKIYAR quote. Sure, it will be a disaster for the nation and for those in it who aren't rich... but fuck 'em.

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Not that we can expect Dancin' Dave on Meet the Press to ever bring it up, after all that deal probably saved him six-figures annually, how it affects you or the country he could give a rat-fuck about.

Funny how any number of Congressman who don't engage in fantasy, advocate universal health care coverage and are not the headliner in a Ronny Reagan drag show are free to attend the champagne brunch of their choice...for a nominal fee of $16.99.

Friday, April 08, 2011

And here I was pining for the days of Katherine Harris, when the new one was right before me the whole time:

“So Kathy Nickolaus was hired at the Capitol years ago by….get ready…David Prosser....She was granted immunity from prosecution to testify during the 2002 GOP Assembly caucus investigations, where she worked in the illegal GOP caucus. And now she runs elections in Waukesha County? I couldn’t even make this stuff up if I tried!”

The in-tray is still bulging with fury over Herr Hitler. I find the arguments bracing – and in themselves evidence that his proposal to restrict the rights of Jews have already helped move the debate to more earnest grounds.

This would be followed, naturally, by praising some "scholarly" research about the "bell curve" nature of head shape showing that White people's heads were more awesome and reflective of intelligence (sans Jews) than the heads of other races.

Now, I'm not saying Sully would be a Nazi, he just wouldn't turn against them until they made him cut out a triangle to wear.

At a late-night White House meeting between the president and key congressional leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made clear that his conference would not approve funding for the government if any money were allowed to flow to Planned Parenthood through legislation known as Title X. "This comes down to women's health issues related to Title X," a person in the meeting told HuffPost.

The negotiations are dominated by men: All of the principal negotiators in both parties are male, as are most of the senior staff involved. (House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have largely been left out of key talks.)

These riders, which obviously have nothing to do with spending and everything to do with the GOP's social agenda (and great job everybody...oh, sorry you men excluding women from being involved at all) were the same things that shut down the government when Clinton and Gingrich were involved.

Back then, these facts, and how the "deficit" issues were plainly bogus were actually widely reported to the citizens of this country.

Binge drinking among American college students is on the rise, along with its consequences of drunk driving and drinking-related deaths

Granted, that is from not quite two-years ago, but there's no reason to think it is any better. So it is good to fulfill the fantasies of Glenn Reynolds' by mixing places of higher learning and even higher keg stands with this:

The Arizona House on Thursday approved a landmark bill allowing guns on campuses...

The Republican-led House voted 33 to 24 to allow firearms to be carried in the open or concealed in public rights of way, such as campus streets and roadways.

What could possibly go wrong?

And, of course, this being Arizona, what a well-timed response to issues of public concern:

"We're allowing people to defend themselves," said Rep. David Gowan Sr., a Republican, who voted for the bill.

"The purpose of carrying a gun with you is to defend yourself against that aggressor," he added.

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

Now, if some poor schmuck, preferable of a brown-hue that Joe Arpaio could assault with a tan, were involved in laundering a few tens of thousands through his small business that would be the end -- and a 20-year term to boot.

But for Wells Fargo...well, you already knew where this was heading.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

...and this:

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, just as Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25bn in taxpayers' money. Wachovia's prosecutors were clear, however, that there was no suggestion Wells Fargo had behaved improperly; it had co-operated fully with the investigation. Mexico is the US's third largest international trading partner and Wachovia was understandably interested in this volume of legitimate trade.

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret. ... In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent.

That's economist Joseph Steiglitz. So much for his appearances on television. And here's the ultimate conclusion:

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity held a rally this afternoon across the street from the Capitol, with several dozen right-wing activists on hand to listen to speeches from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and others. The Republican voters chanted, "Shut it down!" during the rally, and every other sign at the rally urged the GOP to shut down the government.

Congressman Paul Ryan has just insisted the government eliminate at least one of the three newly hatched Decorah eagles. Mark Halperin has agreed to take one out with a sniper rifle just as soon as he stops masturbating.

(I really do think Halperin has fantasies about acts he could commit whilst holding on to Ryan's ears)

Though one party arrived drenched in tears and left in uncontrollable heaving sobs and the other party offered comforting hugs and the usual unilateral offers of compromise there was no budget deal last night.

President Obama emerged from an Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders on Wednesday night with no breakthrough on the budget stalemate, but he said the 90-minute discussion had helped to “narrow the issues” that are outstanding.